John's Blog

We sometimes question the authenticity of our personas and relationships on the internet.  I follow too many people on social media, some of them I know too much about perhaps, but for the vast majority due to the volume of the water in the river of information I know little about at all.  Another part of the issue is that I've never been one to truly master the 'social' part of social media.  I assume most people are playing a modified character based on who they see in the mirror and what we are seeing is either a role or an alternate version of reality.

I bring this up because I witnessed something that was too damn real today.  Someone who I 'follow' but never really interacted with tweeted: @fedge Goodbye. Reading this gut wrenching information while being powerless to do anything about it was as real as anything gets.  An attempt to find him played out on line, but by the time they reached him it was too late since apparently he had queued up his posts and had been gone for some time.

This is the second time I've witnessed something like this play out on social media.  The first time was by someone who was likely just an attention whore and may not have been a serious attempt, but those who knew and cared for her didn't know it at the time and took it seriously.  That being said, I'd prefer the emotional roller coaster of those events to the finality that played out today.

Here was a person who was out there, being honest, with a clear troubles, and none of us caught it.  That saddens me.  RIP @fedge.  You deserved better.